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A Quantitative Analysis of Online Dating

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mountain-of-a-man-seeks-woman-who-smells-like-pizza dept.

imjustatomato writes "Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values. A study analyzes the data of an online dating service. When do you like someone like yourself? Among online dating members, "marital status" and "wants children" are the two most influential characteristics to match. Other interesting findings are: men initiate 73.3% of messages, but their initiations are 17.9% less likely to be reciprocated; 78.2% of messages are never responded to."

5 of 283 comments (clear)

  1. RTFA? by ari_j · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why not link to TFA? Here is a more direct link to the research. I wonder why we got linked from the summary to another summary. Maybe because the summary is new today but the research is 2 years old.

    Anyhow, none of the numbers seem all that surprising, except that 55% of active members are women (63% of all members were men).

  2. okcupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For what it's worth (and I imagine it's worth a lot to slashdot readers), my experiences with online dating have always been best with okcupid. It is free, novel (fun matching tests), and its participants always seem, to me, to be more appealing than those of eharmony, match.com, and all the other paysites.

    1. Re:okcupid by radtea · · Score: 3, Informative

      For what it's worth (and I imagine it's worth a lot to slashdot readers), my experiences with online dating have always been best with okcupid.

      I've found the free sites generally better than the pay sites, too. Never met anyone from okcupid, but I met my current g/f on PlentyOfFish, and met a previous g/f there as well.

      In about three years of online dating I've observed that:

      1) Almost everyone lies, generally about age, appearance and relationship history. Lieing about appearance is the one that I haven't been able to make sense of. I've observed it myself in women, and according to many women I've dated lots of men do it too. One women described a guy she met as being, relative to his online picture, like the "before and after" of some terrible and ravaging disease. Lieing is a showstopper for me, so I have tended to drop a lot of women gently after a first meeting.

      2) Even on the really skanky sites, women are either looking for a relationship or are really messed up. I've never dated anyone from such sites, but poked around out of curiousity. Really.

      3) Free sites are better than pay sites. Lavalife is the best pay site I've used.

      4) Different sites have different geographic representations. I live in a small town, and some sites have far more women in my area than others. I have no idea why.

      5) By far the best strategy is to "meet early, meet often." After a couple of e-mail exchanges I ask if she wants to meet for coffee somewhere. If not, that's the end of it--life is too short to waste time on electronic interaction when five minutes face-to-face will tell you more than five months online.

      Overall, online dating is a very good thing if people go into with reasonable expectations and treat it as an introduction service rather than a magic filter that will find them "the One" without any hard relationship-building work on their part.

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  3. Re:my observation by rossifer · · Score: 4, Informative

    I just married one of the woman I met on match.com in 2003, though the path to getting here was exhausting. I had 13 first dates where either I was interested but she wasn't or she was interested but I wasn't. By the time my wife searched for me and sent me an email, I was very tired of the whole thing and about ready to throw in the towel. But it looked like I would have an interesting conversation with this one last woman, so I went to the coffee shop and had an amazing night.

    Too many women (and probably men) are putting up unrealistically flattering photos, which means an unpleasant suprise in person. My wife unintentionally put up fairly unflattering photos and when I saw her in person, I had to check the room again, as I was so pleasantly suprised. I told her that her photos didn't do her justice and that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

    Just remember that dating websites only kinda solve one part of the problem. They get you introductions to people you would never otherwise meet. If they're honest on their profile, you also get some early answers to important questions, but there are no guarantees there. You're still going to have to go through all of the work of really seeing if the relationship makes sense and then putting in the work to build that relationship into something significant, with all of the joys and difficulties that will bring.

    As for the income thing, match equates "don't want to answer" with "less than $25k/year". My wife didn't want to date the unemployed and put "at least $25k/year" as a filter and only saw me because I had recently made my income visible. So my wife wasn't being a gold-digger, but wouldn't have seen me if I hadn't put my income out there. Match.com's decision-making on this question is particularly questionable.

    Regards,
    Ross

  4. and men love a woman.... by cara · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...who is attractive. No surprise there.

    from grandparent post:
    From my limited experience on Match, I think the most important thing women were looking for was income range. I initially had that on my profile and got swamped with replies, after hiding that bit they slowed way down.

    As a woman I can make a reciprocol evaluation: From my experience, the most important thing men were looking for was looks. I initially had a photo up and got swamped with replies, after removing the photo they slowed way down.